Why The GOP Case Against Susan Rice Is So Odd

She relied "solely and squarely" on info from the intelligence
community?

That seems a bit odd, considering that the intelligence community
suspected terrorism from the very beginning, which means that
something doesn't fit here — and the most obvious possibility for
that missing link is that somebody high up in the food chain
tweaked the talking points on a very inconvenient situation with
only weeks to go before a close presidential election, although
the White House has denied having done so.

The post goes on to allege that Rice was part of a "cover-up."
Johnsen's factual rebuttal to Rice is linked in an NBC news story headlined, "Intelligence
Officials: We knew attack in Benghazi was terrorist attack from
the beginning."

The piece is presented as though it contradicts Susan Rice's
claim that she was following her talking points. But that isn't
what the story actually
says:

Officials said that although there was no question that the
attack was terrorism, they did not know whether they were
spontaneous or planned long in advance. They also did not have
the suspects' identities. That's why, they
said, they kept their unclassified talking points for Rice vague
to avoid compromising future legal proceedings.

More:

So why were those unclassified talking points created in the
first place?

Officials say they were produced in response to requests from the
House Select Committee on Intelligence for language that could be
used in media interviews. The main purpose was to provide talking
points sensitive to the fact that there could be legal
proceedings in the future, the senior official said. Initial
intelligence was tenuous, and affiliations were unclear.
Investigators also worried the investigation could be compromised
if they provided too much information.

In cases like this find it always worthwhile to revisit the
original statements. From Susan Rice:

On Sept. 16, Rice said on Meet the Press that the violence
sweeping the Islamic world at the time was "a spontaneous
reaction to a video, and it's not dissimilar but, perhaps, on a
slightly larger scale than what we have seen in the past with
'The Satanic Verses' with the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad."

She then elaborated on the specific attack on the US consulate in
Libya: "Putting together the best information that we have
available to us today, our current assessment is that what
happened in Benghazi was in fact initially a spontaneous reaction
to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a
copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo,
which were prompted, of course, by the video."

This is deceptive. And perhaps you believe that the White House,
no matter the opinion of the intelligence community, has the
responsibility to say all that it thinks it knows as forthrightly
as possible, as soon as possible.

But that isn't what Republicans are arguing. They are arguing
that the CIA was the honest broker, and the White House
intentionally played dumb in order to reap the political benefit
of not saying America is under attack by terrorists.

But it's not clear that that there was any political benefit to
this strategy at all. On the contrary, terrorists attacks on
America routinely rally support for the commander in chief.

The idea that renewing the war against Al Qaeda somehow hurts the
president who oversaw the killing of Osama Bin Laden, and helps
the candidate who bumbled the England and Israel wondering "What
this button do?" is bizarre.

The oddity of the Republican response to what happened in
Benghazi is partly this focus on half-baked conspiracy theories
rather than on the real evidence of failures by the State
Department, Pentagon and CIA in protecting the Benghazi mission.
What's even stranger is the singling out of Ms. Rice, a Rhodes
scholar and seasoned policymaker who, whatever her failings, is
no one's fool.

Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are
charging, that the signatories of the letter are targeting Ms.
Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories
deny that, and we can't know their hearts. What we do know is
that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly
half are from states of the former Confederacy. You'd think that
before launching their broadside, members of Congress would have
taken care not to propagate any falsehoods of their own.

Republicans are certainly not attacking Rice simply because she
is a black woman. But it is certainly likely that they are
attacking her because she is a black woman, allied with a black
man, who represents the party which black America believes is the
best vehicle for its particular interests, and the broader
interests of the country. In other words the
question isn't "Is Senator Lindsey Graham racist?" so
much as it's "Who does Senator Lindsey Graham
represent?"

The answer is Graham represents a party whose candidate for the
presidency believes black Obama voters are guilty of the sin of
electoral bribery, while white Romney voters are simply guilty of
loving their country too hard. Graham represents the party of
birther claims and birther jokes; the party which thinks
attempting to restrict the votes of black and brown people is
good use of their resources. The notion that you can separate who
Republicans target, from how their base tends to evaluate those
targets is willfully naive.

It does not matter what dwells in Lindsay Graham's heart. No one
knows. The hard interests are what matter.